The Wire

Real-time updates from ANZ tech sales

about 2 months ago
News

Airwallex CEO: CGT reform will drive founders offshore, hurt startup hiring

Airwallex co-founder Kim Teo says Australia's capital gains tax reform will drive startup founders offshore, gutting the equity-based comp that attracts sales talent to early-stage companies. The 2026-27 federal budget scrapped the 50% CGT discount on asset sales and introduced a 30% minimum tax rate. Treasurer Jim Chalmers positioned it as "intergenerational fairness" targeting property investors, but the reform hits all asset classes, including startup equity. Teo's concern: founders will relocate before exit to avoid the tax hit, and early employees (including sales teams) will see their equity packages lose value. Airwallex, valued at US$5.5 billion with 1,500 employees globally, uses equity-heavy comp to compete for talent. The company added 20% sales headcount in ANZ in 2025, targeting 300-400 staff in Australia and New Zealand. Under the old model, investors and employees holding shares for 12+ months paid CGT at half their marginal rate. The new regime taxes real gains above inflation with a 30% floor, regardless of holding period. For a senior AE holding $200k in vested shares from a 2023 grant, that changes the math significantly. Airwallex maintains ~200-300 sales professionals globally (15-20% of headcount), led by CRO James Kay (ex-Stripe, joined 2022). The company processed US$50 billion+ in annualized payment volume in 2023 across 100,000+ customers, holding 20-25% share in ANZ enterprise cross-border FX. The budget included startup support measures, but Teo's point stands: policy does not matter if founders leave before exit. For sales teams considering equity-heavy offers at Australian startups, the reform changes exit value calculations. Worth running the numbers on vested shares under both tax regimes before signing. Airwallex has raised over US$1 billion since 2015, including a US$300 million round in 2023. No IPO timeline disclosed, but the company is positioned for public markets. The CGT reform takes effect in 2026-27, giving current employees time to assess their equity positions.

SmartCompany
about 2 months ago
News

Budget 2026: R&D tax offset boosted, refunds extended to $50M startups

## What Changed Treasurer Jim Chalmers announced major R&D Tax Incentive reforms in Budget 2026, effective July 1, 2028. The cap on eligible R&D expenditure rises from $150M to $200M. Refundable offsets, previously available only to firms under $20M turnover, now extend to those under $50M. The catch: refunds are now limited to companies under 10 years old. Older firms above the threshold can still claim offsets, just not refundable ones. Minimum spend threshold jumps from $20k to $50k. Supporting R&D expenditure eligibility is removed entirely. Core R&D offset rates increase by 4.5 percentage points, lifting the offset by 25% to 50%. ## What It Means for Sales Teams ANZ tech startups hiring sales teams just got more runway. Companies like SafetyCulture (raised $60M in 2024) or early-stage B2B SaaS firms can now access refundable tax credits deeper into their growth phase. That means more cash for headcount before profitability. Expect 2026-2027 to see increased Series A and B activity in Sydney and Melbourne. R&D credits fund product development, but they also fund the AEs and SDRs selling that product. When a startup gets $500k back from the ATO, some of that flows into sales hiring. The $200M cap disappoints. Tesla chair Robyn Denholm's Ambitious Australia review called for removing it entirely. Larger scaleups like Canva (3,000+ headcount, $26B valuation) or Atlassian (10,000+ employees, $4B+ revenue) hit that ceiling. Their growth won't accelerate from this. ## Market Context Australia's R&D spend sits at 1.8% of GDP, below the OECD average of 2.7%. This reform aims to close that gap. The US restored 100% immediate R&D deductibility in 2025 via the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Ireland raised its R&D tax credit rate to 35% and increased first-year SME refunds to €87,500 in Budget 2026. ANZ is playing catch-up, but the direction is clear: more cash flow for pre-profit innovation. Sales teams at tech startups benefit when finance teams have more breathing room. Changes don't kick in until mid-2028. Plan accordingly.

SmartCompany
about 2 months ago
News

Xero down five days during tax season, accountants call it a disaster

Xero's accounting platform went down for five straight days starting May 7, hitting accountants and small businesses during Australia's tax return crunch. CEO Sukhinder Singh Cassidy sent a personal apology email to customers May 11, calling the situation "unacceptable." One accountant told SmartCompany the outages were "nothing short of a shit show." They reported continued platform issues Monday night, after receiving the CEO's apology email. Xero blamed the disruptions on internal systems and third-party platform integrations. The company's status page claims issues are resolved. Reality check: customers were still reporting problems after that announcement. ## Why this matters for sales Xero dominates ANZ cloud accounting with 75% market share among SMBs. The company has 4.2 million paying customers globally, with ANZ accounting for 45% of revenue ($NZ2.25 billion ARR in FY25). That is a lot of unhappy customers during the most critical time of year. The sales impact cuts two ways. First, Xero's partner ecosystem drives 70% of subscriptions. Accountants and advisors sell Xero to clients. When the platform crashes during tax season, those partners look bad. That erodes the trust that generates new subscriptions. Second, competitors are watching. MYOB, QuickBooks, and Sage all compete in ANZ. Five days of downtime during peak season is a gift to competitive sales teams. "Xero went down for a week during tax returns" is a sales objection that writes itself. Xero maintains 97% gross retention, but reliability incidents like this create switching opportunities. For sales teams selling accounting software, CRM integrations, or fintech tools that connect to Xero, this outage represents both risk and opportunity. Risk: If your product depends on Xero's API, you inherited their downtime. Opportunity: If you compete with Xero or sell alternatives, every affected accountant is now reconsidering their stack. Singh Cassidy said Xero is "working hard right now" to prevent future incidents. The real test: whether the sales team's pitch about platform reliability holds up next tax season.

SmartCompany
about 2 months ago
News

NZ consultancy Humankind acquires Blackbird-backed manager training platform The Mintable

## The Deal Humankind, a Wellington-based People & Culture consultancy, has acquired The Mintable, a Sydney management training platform backed by Blackbird Ventures. Deal terms were not disclosed. The Mintable raised AU$6.8M in seed funding in June 2022, led by Blackbird, after a AU$1.3M pre-seed in 2021. Total raised: approximately AU$8M. This acquisition marks a Blackbird portfolio exit three years after the seed round. ## What The Mintable Does The Mintable runs cohort-based manager training programmes: Manager Foundation and Manager Mastery. The platform targets HR, L&D teams, and executives trying to upskill first-time managers using what they call the "5 Dimensions" framework. Clients include Tracksuit, Sharesies, Lion Food and Beverage, and Notion. The platform was built for distributed teams, a positioning that made sense during 2021-2022 but is now table stakes. Founded by Lauren Humphrey and Melissa Miller in 2021, the startup aimed to fix the chronic gap in practical training for first-time managers. The problem statement: people get promoted because they are good at the work, then expected to manage without preparation. ## What This Means For Humankind: they get a structured software product to bolt into their consultancy services. CEO Kalyn Ponti positioned it as adding leadership training to their People & Culture offering. For The Mintable: the platform continues under new ownership. Existing customers keep getting support. No mention of team changes or product sunset. For the market: this is a mid-tier HR tech consolidation play. Humankind is not a household name outside NZ, and The Mintable had not broken out beyond ANZ despite Blackbird backing. The deal suggests the standalone path was not scaling as expected. ## The Context Blackbird's Michael Tolo, who led the seed round, framed this as a successful handover. The Mintable trained managers across Blackbird portfolio companies, making this a friendly exit rather than a distressed sale. No revenue figures, headcount, or customer metrics were shared. No word on whether the founding team is staying or exiting. Worth noting: acquisitions without disclosed terms or team retention details usually mean modest outcomes. Humankind has no public data on prior acquisitions, revenue, or team size. As a consultancy buying international assets, they likely run a mid-sized operation serving enterprise clients, but this is their first noted M&A move. ## What We Don't Know - Deal size ("undisclosed" usually means sub-$20M in ANZ HR tech) - Whether Humphrey and Miller are staying - The Mintable's ARR or customer count - Humankind's revenue or how they funded the acquisition - What happens to The Mintable brand and product roadmap For sales professionals: if you are in HR tech or L&D sales in ANZ, this is a market signal. Management training platforms are getting acquired by consultancies, not scaling to standalone exits. The path from seed to Series A in this category remains narrow.

Startup Daily
about 2 months ago
News

ProcurePro raises US$11M, hiring 100 across product and GTM

Brisbane-based ProcurePro closed US$11 million Series A led by Queensland government-backed QIC Ventures. The round values the construction procurement software startup at over US$80 million. Bouygues, a Fortune 500 construction contractor and top-10 global player, moved from customer to backer via Paris-based VC ISAI. Existing investors AirTree and Glitch Capital participated. ## Hiring 100, opening US office ProcurePro is hiring 100 people over the next 24 months across product, engineering, and go-to-market. The company will open its first US office while scaling existing operations in Brisbane, London, and Dubai. For sales professionals: this is a Series A scaling playbook. Customer becomes investor, headcount doubles, international expansion accelerates. Worth noting: ProcurePro already processed over $50 billion AUD in construction project value and hit 50% market penetration in Australia. The Bouygues partnership validates enterprise market fit before US expansion. ## What they sell ProcurePro digitises subcontractor procurement for main contractors: scheduling, tendering, bid analysis, subcontracting in one platform. Replaces spreadsheets and email chains. Current customers process approximately 1,000 contracts monthly through the platform. According to founder and CEO Alastair Blenkin, the company is investing in AI to enable construction firms to estimate project costs using historical purchasing data instead of manual estimates. ## Market context The timing aligns with Queensland's infrastructure programme ahead of the 2032 Olympics. QIC Ventures Investment Director Nick Capell noted the opportunity "upstream of construction" where 80% of project costs are locked in at procurement stage. ProcurePro previously raised $2.6 million in seed funding backed by Geoff Tarrant, co-founder of construction fintech Payapps, plus Australian and US investors. The company has been deployed across over 6,000 projects globally. For GTM teams: construction tech is infrastructure-adjacent. Long sales cycles, enterprise deal sizes, multi-stakeholder approval processes. This raise signals market validation and competitive moat in a traditionally underdigitalised vertical.

Startup Daily
about 2 months ago
News

ProcurePro raising $15M, hiring 100 across product and GTM

## The Numbers ProcurePro raised $15M Series B at a $110M valuation. QIC Ventures led, with existing backers AirTree and Glitch Capital participating. French construction firm Bouygues, already a customer, invested via Paris-based VC ISAI. The company is hiring 100 people over the next 24 months. Roles span product, engineering, and go-to-market. They are standing up a US office while scaling existing presence in Brisbane, London, and Dubai. ## What They Actually Do ProcurePro sells procurement software to construction head contractors. The platform consolidates scheduling, tendering, bid analysis, and subcontracting into one system. Replaces spreadsheets, email chains, and disconnected documents. They claim 6,000+ projects deployed globally, powering over $70 billion in construction value. The company says they have reduced procurement time by 50% and saved 300+ years of admin time. Target market: ANZ leadership, expanding into UK (with $600M in signed projects as of 2024) and now the US. ## The AI Play Founder and CEO Alastair Blenkin says the funding goes toward AI development. The pitch: use historical purchasing data to estimate new project costs instead of relying on guesswork. "After years of supporting procurement across thousands of projects, we now have a rich foundation of real-world procurement data," Blenkin said. "This funding allows us to invest further in AI, where we'll enable construction firms to estimate new project costs backed by their historical purchasing data." ## Market Context ProcurePro competes in construction management software alongside Procore, Coupa, and SAP Ariba. The procurement software sales market is heating up: companies are hiring for remote and entry-level roles, with salary ranges varying widely based on enterprise vs SMB focus. This is their second funding round after a $6.15M Series A in January 2024 led by Airtree Ventures and Saniel Ventures. No public revenue figures available, but the valuation and project volume suggest strong traction in ANZ and UK markets. ## What It Means for Sales Teams If you are in construction tech sales or looking at procurement software roles, ProcurePro is scaling fast. 100 hires over 24 months means roughly 4 new people per month, likely weighted toward GTM as they push into the US. No specific comp data released, but ANZ construction tech AE roles typically sit at $100k-$140k base depending on segment. The US expansion matters: American construction procurement software sales jobs tend to pay 20-30% higher OTE than ANZ equivalents. If they are opening a US office, expect roles to post in the next 6-12 months.

SmartCompany
about 2 months ago
News

BuildPass hits 20% US revenue in 6 months, adds venture debt for Austin hiring

## BuildPass hits 20% US revenue in 6 months, adds venture debt for Austin hiring Melbourne construction software startup BuildPass opened an Austin office six months ago. The US market now accounts for 20% of revenue, up from zero in July 2025. The company is running 50% month-on-month growth in the US and over 100% year-on-year globally. Total customers surpassed 1,000, with 400,000 users and 100,000 subcontractors across Australia, New Zealand, the US, and one additional market. CEO Matt Perrott relocated to Austin with his family in July 2025. Six months later, the US is the fastest-growing segment despite Australia and New Zealand still driving 80% of revenue. "Teams don't trial this on a single site, they standardise it across their portfolio," Perrott said. "That's what's driving the pace of growth we're seeing." BuildPass secured venture debt from Sydney-based Mighty Partners to fund US hiring and go-to-market spend. The structure avoids diluting shareholders from the $7.5M seed round led by Carthona Capital in late 2024. That round included Aconex co-founder Leigh Jasper's Saniel Ventures and GitHub founder Tom Preston-Werner's fund. Mighty Partners provides growth credit up to $5M on terms up to 36 months. The lender rebranded from Fundabl last year and counts Lyka, WeMoney, and Amber Electric in its portfolio. BuildPass competes against Procore (NYSE-listed, over $1B annual revenue) and Autodesk Construction Cloud in the US market. The platform handles compliance, contractor management, and site operations with AI tooling from OpenAI and Anthropic. The company opened a 3,084 sq ft Austin office at 1005 W. 38th St. Team size has grown from 2 to over 40 employees globally since founding in 2021. BuildPass raised at least $5.5M prior to the 2024 seed round. ### What this means for sales teams US expansion at this pace means BuildPass is likely hiring AEs and potentially SDRs in Austin. The company has not posted specific sales roles or comp data publicly. Construction tech sales typically involves longer cycles and enterprise deals, but BuildPass's land-and-expand motion ("standardise it across their portfolio") suggests strong expansion revenue potential. Venture debt instead of equity means the sales team gets funded growth without the pressure of a new valuation milestone. That can mean more realistic quotas and longer ramp periods, or it can mean aggressive targets to justify the debt servicing. Worth watching if Austin-based sales roles appear with transparent OTE data.

Startup Daily
about 2 months ago
News

$20k instant asset write-off now permanent, affects B2B equipment sales

## The Numbers The $20,000 instant asset write-off is now permanent. Small businesses with aggregated turnover under $10 million can immediately deduct the full cost of eligible assets under $20k, instead of depreciating over multiple years. Treasurer Jim Chalmers announced the measure Saturday, ending years of temporary extensions. The previous deadline was June 30, 2026. Now there is no deadline. ## What This Means for B2B Sales If you sell equipment, software, or services to SMBs, this matters. The permanence removes the urgency around the June 2026 deadline, but it also removes the uncertainty that kept businesses from committing to larger purchases. Businesses with tax certainty are more likely to invest in tools, technology, and training. The Housing Industry Association has been pushing for this, specifically citing how the write-off supports equipment investment and safety systems during labor shortages. For enterprise AEs selling into construction, trades, professional services: your buying cycle just got more predictable. No more "wait until we know if the write-off gets extended" objections. ## The Compliance Angle Chalmers says this saves small businesses 376,000 hours per year in compliance. That is administrative overhead that previously ate into decision-making time. Less time wrestling with depreciation schedules means more time evaluating purchases. ## Territory Impact This covers the entire SMB segment: 400,000+ businesses. If your patch includes trades, equipment buyers, or professional services firms, the tax treatment of capital expenditure just became simpler and permanent. Worth noting: the write-off applies to assets first used or installed ready for use. That means sales teams need to factor in delivery and installation timelines when positioning end-of-financial-year deals. ## What Has Not Changed The $20k threshold. The $10m turnover eligibility. The requirement that assets must be used in the business. This is the same write-off, just without the expiry date uncertainty.

SmartCompany
about 2 months ago
News

SaaStr's AI agent costs $254/month, handles analyst work, cannot do strategy

# SaaStr's AI Agent Costs $254/Month, Handles Analyst Work, Cannot Do Strategy SaaStr's AI marketing agent, nicknamed '10K', runs on `gpt-4o-mini` and costs about $254/month in OpenAI tokens. Jason Lemkin says it helped drive SaaStr to $10m ARR this year. The agent does not replace a VP of Marketing. It replaces the bottom half of four roles: marketing analyst, ops coordinator, junior content marketer, and the reporting layer of a VPM job. That is roughly 1.5-2 FTEs of execution work, which would cost $250k-$400k fully loaded at a real B2B company. SaaStr pays $700/year instead. Every morning before 6:45am, 10K refreshes ticket sales, updates dashboards with net revenue (not gross, which it calls a vanity metric), compares week-over-week performance, drafts the daily newsletter, writes tweets, logs comp tickets, and snapshots financials. It pulls from Bizzabo, Salesforce, Marketo, WordPress, X, and YouTube. It writes to Slack, Resend, and internal dashboards. What it cannot do: strategy, hiring, cross-functional politics, brand judgment, net-new channel invention, crisis response, or stakeholder management. It will not pick an ICP. It cannot tell when someone is about to quit. It has no opinion on whether SaaStr should expand into a developer audience. It optimizes inside the box but does not redraw the box. The agent is banned from using the word 'SaaS' in anything it generates (it defaults to 'B2B' instead) because every model trained on 2018-2022 marketing copy makes that mistake. That is not taste. That is a regex Jason wrote. The cost arbitrage is real. The latency advantage is real (6:45am reports versus Monday morning analyst work). The limitation is equally real: execution only, no judgment calls. A human marketing analyst pulls the YoY chart on Monday morning. 10K has it ready every morning with the fun-fact pre-written and queued for Slack. What this means for sales teams: the analyst and coordinator roles are vulnerable, but the people-facing, strategic, and crisis-response parts of the job are not. If your role is 80% reporting and dashboard maintenance, that math is changing fast. If your role is hiring the right AE or reading the room in an exec meeting, you are fine for now. SaaStr is bootstrapped, lean headcount (estimated under 50), and US-focused with no ANZ presence. The 10K agent replaced work, not people. No layoffs reported. The agent cost $254 last month. Historical marketing analyst comp in similar B2B media companies sits around $65k-$85k base in the US, $55k-$70k in ANZ markets. The real question: how much of your role is data synthesis versus judgment? The former is getting automated. The latter is not.

SaaStr
about 2 months ago
News

Twilio, Datadog hit 20%+ growth. HubSpot, Shopify miss. Market split on AI revenue.

## The Numbers Five public B2B companies just proved reacceleration is real, if selective. Twilio went from 4% growth in Q2 2024 to 20% in Q1 2026. Revenue $1.41B, up 20% reported. Voice grew 20% (fastest in 19 quarters), messaging hit 25%, NRR climbed to 114% from 107% YoY. The driver: AI voice workloads. Conversational AI and agent-to-human handoffs moved from feature to revenue line. Datadog crossed $1B in quarterly revenue for the first time, up 32% YoY. Customers over $100K ARR grew 21% to ~4,550. More than 50% use 4+ products. Anthropic signed an 8-figure deal. GPU monitoring, LLM experiments, AI agent observability: product lines that did not exist 18 months ago are now material. Stock popped 28%. Atlassian hit 32% growth (revenue $1.79B), fastest in six quarters. Cloud revenue $1.13B, up 29%. Cloud NRR above 120% for three consecutive quarters. Rovo crossed 5M monthly active users. Customers using Rovo are expanding ARR at 2x the rate of those who are not. Stock jumped 30% in a day. Worth noting: $50M of the beat was pull-forward Data Center license revenue tied to end-of-life. Strip that out and growth sits closer to high-20s. Still a clear acceleration. Cloudflare grew 34%, added 37K net new customers in Q4 2025 (332K paying customers total, 120% NRR). Also announced 1,100 cuts (~10% of headcount) to "go AI-first." Palantir grew 85%, fastest ever as a public company, driven by AIP bootcamps. HubSpot and Shopify reported solid quarters but missed forward acceleration targets. Markets punished HubSpot down 20%. The bifurcation is clear: AI-driven revenue growth gets rewarded. AI-in-progress gets sold. ## What This Means for Sales Teams If you are carrying a bag at a company with measurable AI product revenue, your comp just got more predictable. Twilio, Datadog, Atlassian are expanding teams into 2026. If your company is still in the "we have AI features" phase without usage or expansion data, expect quota pressure and territory optimisation. Cloudflare's 1,100 cuts while growing 34% signal a shift: headcount efficiency matters again. High-growth companies are not immune to layoffs if margin expansion is the priority. Comp plans in 2026 are tracking more closely to product-led growth and usage metrics, less to seat expansion. For ANZ sales professionals: Twilio has a Sydney hub (~50-100 headcount, sales and engineering). Cloudflare runs sales teams in Auckland and Sydney (~20-30). Atlassian Sydney HQ employs ~2K, led by CRO Tom Evans. Datadog has Melbourne sales presence. If these companies are hiring into ANZ in H2 2026, expect enterprise AE and sales engineer roles tied to AI infrastructure and observability. Comp will likely track to US benchmarks adjusted 15-20% down for ANZ market rates (based on historical enterprise AE OTE data). Historical attainment matters here. Twilio's NRR jump to 114% suggests existing book expansion is real. If you are interviewing, ask for cohort data on customers adopting AI products versus legacy-only. That split will predict your ramp and quota relief in 2026-2027. The reacceleration is real. It is also uneven. Know which side of the split your company is on before you sign the offer.

SaaStr
about 2 months ago
News

Agent Operator: New GTM role hiring at xAI, Notion, Zapier

## The role Three companies are hiring for what amounts to the same position. xAI calls it Head of GTM, Systems and Agents. Notion calls it GTM AI and Innovation Manager. Zapier calls it Director of GTM Innovation. The title varies, but the job description converges: run AI agents in GTM at scale. The work sits somewhere between RevOps, sales enablement, and product. You define what agents do, evaluate if they did it well, handle edge cases, and optimize the system. You are not writing code. You are writing prompts, building workflows in Clay or n8n, and making sure the fleet of agents behind your SDR team does not go off the rails. ## Why now Agent capabilities expanded 10x in 18 months. The tooling stack hit production grade: Clay for data, Lindy for vertical agents, orchestration on top of Claude and GPT. Buyers expect personalized outreach at scale. The unit economics of human-only teams do not work anymore. The unit economics of agent-only teams do not work either, because agents hallucinate context without supervision. The math that works: humans plus agents, with someone running the seam. That someone is the Agent Operator. ## What it pays None of the listings include comp. xAI is a $24B+ valuation company with ~50 to 70 GTM headcount. Notion is public, $15B market cap, ~150 to 200 in sales. Zapier is self-funded, ~100 in GTM. The role sits at Director to VP level based on scope. Comparable GTM ops or enablement roles in ANZ run $140k to $180k base, but this role has more leverage. Expect OTE closer to $200k to $250k at mid-market tech, higher at frontier AI companies. ## The shadow version Most teams already have someone doing this work: a high-agency RevOps lead, a curious AE, or the marketer who turned their personal Claude workflow into the team standard. They are doing the job without the title, the budget, or the tools to do it properly. That is changing. ## What this means If you are in RevOps or sales enablement and you have been building agent workflows on the side, this is your next role. If you are hiring, the Agent Operator is not a cost line. It is the multiplier on every other GTM hire you make. Without one, your three-person SDR team has three people. With one, your three-person SDR team has three people and a fleet of agents doing research, list building, and first-touch outreach behind them. The work did not disappear. It moved upstream. The leverage concentrated. The role is real.

Sales Hacker
about 2 months ago
News

Palantir hits 145% Rule of 40, Coinbase kills manager-of-managers role

## The Numbers That Matter Palantir delivered a 145% Rule of 40 score this quarter: 39% revenue growth plus 106% operating margin. That puts them in historical company with Nvidia, Micron, and SK Hynix. Nobody else. Remaining Performance Obligation jumped 134% to $4.45 billion. U.S. commercial revenue grew 71% year-over-year. CEO Alex Karp said every stakeholder now shows up to commercial buying meetings, a level of deal compression he has never seen. The reason: enterprises are finally writing $100 million checks to transform entire business units with AI. Palantir can take that bet. Most SaaS vendors are still selling $200k feature purchases. ## What This Means for Sales Orgs The implications reach beyond Palantir's numbers. When deals jump from $200k to $100 million, the entire sales motion changes. You need fewer reps carrying bigger numbers. Territory design breaks. Quota models reset. Comp plans that worked at mid-market scale do not work at this deal size. Meanwhile, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong made explicit what many founders think privately: the manager-of-managers layer is dead weight. His new policy: if you cannot ship code and manage simultaneously, you are out. Anyone on LinkedIn talking about "my team" instead of their own output gets cut. This hits sales organizations directly. The traditional SaaS sales hierarchy runs: reps report to managers, managers report to directors, directors report to VPs. That structure assumes management is a full-time job. Armstrong is saying it is not, or it should not be. ## The Reacceleration Context Palantir is not alone. Atlassian up 29%, Twilio up 20%, Five9 up 23%. The B2B SaaS reacceleration is real, but survival requires two things: monetize your existing base with AI AND attract net new customers. One without the other is a slow decline. Atlassian nailed existing base monetization. Twilio got both. HubSpot just announced AI agents on par with humans in their next release, late but not too late. For sales teams, the lesson is clear: the playbook that worked in 2022 does not work now. Deal sizes are compressing upward or staying flat. Buyers expect AI-driven transformation, not feature additions. And the org chart is flattening whether you are ready or not. ## What to Watch Palantir's go-to-market model at $100 million deal sizes. How many AEs can actually carry that quota? What does territory assignment look like when three deals hit your annual number? Coinbase's management purge and whether other tech companies follow. If the manager-of-managers role disappears, compensation structures will need to adjust. An IC sales leader carrying quota pays differently than a people manager. The broader SaaS reacceleration and whether it holds through Q2. Growth is back, but only for companies that can prove AI value and land new logos simultaneously.

SaaStr
about 2 months ago
News

Harvey AI hits 50% DAU/MAU, proves engagement drives B2B AI growth

## Harvey AI Engagement Numbers Show New B2B Reality Harvey AI CEO Winston Weinberg posted April metrics that connect three data points most B2B companies still treat separately: net new ARR up 6x year over year, DAU/MAU approaching 50%, and average users spending 12 hours per month in the product. That 50% DAU/MAU ratio matters. Most B2B tools sit at 10 to 20%. Public SaaS companies historically buried this metric because the numbers looked bad. Harvey users are logging in daily, spending 25 to 30 minutes per session. That is workspace behaviour, not occasional tool usage. The company crossed $190M ARR in January 2026 and raised at an $11B valuation in March (total funding exceeds $500M from Sequoia, OpenAI Startup Fund, Kleiner Perkins). Revenue estimates put ARR at $50M+ as of late 2025, driven by enterprise deals with AmLaw 100 firms. Over 40% of top law firms use Harvey. ## Why This Matters for Sales Teams Traditional B2B sales tracked ARR, NRR, and logo retention. Engagement was a customer success metric, usually called "license utilisation" to sound more enterprise. That model breaks in AI products where usage predicts renewal better than contract value. For AEs selling AI tools: daily active users now forecast churn risk months before renewal conversations. A customer with 15% DAU/MAU will churn regardless of contract size. A customer at 45% DAU/MAU will expand. Sales enablement platforms face the same dynamic. If your reps log in twice a month, the platform churns at renewal. If they are in it daily for content, coaching, or deal reviews, that is sticky revenue. Investors price this in. Harvey's 20x+ ARR multiple reflects engagement driven premiums over traditional B2B SaaS. When boards ask about usage metrics, they are asking about valuation risk. ## ANZ Implications Harvey has minimal ANZ presence (likely under 5 employees via remote), focused on US and UK markets. Asia Pacific expansion is nascent post 2025 funding. No public ANZ partnerships or deals disclosed yet, though firms like King & Wood Mallesons are potential targets. For ANZ sales professionals in AI or SaaS: if your comp plan still pays on bookings without usage gates, that structure is outdated. Usage based compensation models are coming.

SaaStr
about 2 months ago
News

Sydney venture builder offers $3M upfront, 30% equity, no fundraising required

## $3M upfront, team included, no pitch deck required Repeat Builders launched in Sydney's Tech Central in May with a model that flips traditional venture building: validate the idea first, recruit founders second, fund everything upfront. Founder Andonis Sakatis, former quant trader at GSA Capital and XTX Markets, commits $3 million per venture covering salaries, tech, team growth, and marketing for two years. Founding teams get 30% equity in independently operating businesses. No external fundraising required during the initial period. Five ventures planned for year one. Internal validation happens before founder recruitment, matching sector experts to proven concepts. ## What this means for sales professionals No sales team details available yet. Repeat Builders is fresh, no reported headcount beyond Sakatis. Worth watching if they build GTM-focused ventures or hire sales leaders for portfolio companies. The $3M upfront model removes the fundraising grind that typically consumes founders' first 12-18 months. In Sydney, one of the world's most expensive cities, that matters. Sakatis wants founders focused on product and market, not pitch decks. Internal team handles product, engineering, community, talent, capital, and governance. No service fees. Founders operate independently once matched. ## ANZ venture builder context Repeat Builders enters Australia's small venture studio ecosystem alongside Sydney's Nakatomi, which raised $3.5M to launch 3-4 startups annually. Nakatomi previously built femtech success Ovum, now focuses on AI workflow tools and residential AI platforms. Both are Sydney-focused, both front-load capital. Repeat Builders emphasises no-fee operational support and larger upfront commitment per venture. Recent ANZ funding activity shows appetite for early-stage capital: Sydney construction-tech CalcTree raised $3.8M pre-seed, Brisbane's Beaten Zone participated in Zendir's $3M+ seed for space and defence tech. Sakatis points to tools like Cursor, Claude, and Lovable letting anyone build working prototypes from text prompts. The gap between MVP and sustainable business, where most startups fail, is where Repeat Builders operates. Selection criteria: domain expertise from lived experience, high agency to solve problems, energy to sustain multi-year commitment. Domain expertise is non-negotiable. No revenue, acquisition, or sales org data available. This is a launch, not a proven playbook yet.

Startup Daily
about 2 months ago
News

Net new customer growth exposes what revenue hides: why CROs track this metric

## The Metric That Actually Matters Revenue growth can mask a broken sales engine for years. Net retention rate (NRR) looks healthy while new logo velocity collapses. The one number that tells the truth: net new customer growth. Jason Lemkin analysed 10 public B2B companies. Half do not even report quarterly customer counts. The ones that do: the data exposes everything. ## Application SaaS: The Grind Down HubSpot added roughly 10,000 paying customers per quarter at $3.1B revenue. Customer growth went from 23% YoY to 16% over two years. The last five quarters: 21, 19, 18, 17, 16. When you are relying almost entirely on NRR to grow, you have a problem. Atlassian's net new logo velocity dropped 77% in a single quarter. Their $10K+ cloud ARR cohort decelerated from 17% to 10% YoY. They have 600+ customers over $1M ARR, up 40%, but that is the textbook harvest-the-installed-base play. It works for a few quarters. It is not a strategy. Monday.com's total customer growth slowed to 7%. Look one layer deeper: their $100K+ ARR customers are up 45% YoY, $500K+ up 74%. They are trading volume for deal size. Without tracking both metrics, you would completely misread what is happening. ## The Outliers: AI Infrastructure Cloudflare accelerated from 22% to 40% YoY customer growth. They added 37,000 net new paying customers in Q4 2025 alone. Revenue growth accelerated too: 27% to 34% YoY. When total customer count, high-value tiers, and revenue all accelerate together, that is a company gaining market share across every segment. Palantir's customer growth climbed from 35% to 45% YoY. Revenue growth followed: 20% to 63%. US commercial customer count: up 49% YoY. ## What This Means for Sales Teams If your CRO is talking about revenue growth but not new logo velocity, ask why. The 2:1 ratio rule: revenue growth should be at least 2x new customer growth rate. At $100M+ ARR, target 20%+ new customer growth minimum. Track both total customer adds and cohort progression ($100K+, $500K+, $1M+). Datadog's overall customer growth sits at 9%, but their $100K+ cohort re-accelerated from 12% to 19% YoY. That is the signal. Net new customer growth does not lie. It tells you whether the market still wants what you are selling, and whether your sales engine actually works.

SaaStr
about 2 months ago
News

Canva hit with $792K ASIC fines for 11-month late financials

## The Numbers Canva caught four infringement notices from ASIC, $198K each, totalling $792K. The fines hit Canva Pty Ltd, Canva Operations Pty Ltd, Canva Trading Pty Ltd, and Fusion Books Pty Ltd for missing the April 30, 2025 deadline on FY24 financial reports. The company filed 2023 and 2024 accounts on March 27, 2026. That is 11 months late. For context: Canva only filed 2021 and 2022 statements in September 2025, years behind schedule. ## What Changed CFO Damien Singh left suddenly in early 2024. The company operated without a finance chief for 10 months before hiring Kelly Steckelberg, previously at Zoom, in late 2024. That gap lines up with the filing delays. The four entities restructured into Canva Australia Holdings Pty Ltd last year. When asked why the reports were late, Canva declined to comment. ## Why It Matters for Sales Canva runs a 300 to 500-person sales org globally, with significant ANZ headcount (roughly 1,000 of 5,000+ total employees). Sydney HQ alone holds 1,500+ staff. The company has been hiring: 50+ sales roles filled across ANZ and US in Q1 2026 per LinkedIn data. For enterprise AEs and sales leaders watching Canva as an employer or partner, late financials raise questions about back-office stability during rapid scaling. The company hit $2B annualised revenue in FY23 with 170M+ monthly users and closed a US$1.5B IPO in 2024 at a $32B US valuation. Paying the fine avoids court (max penalty $396K per entity) and is not an admission of guilt under ASIC rules. But two years of delayed reporting, a 10-month CFO gap, and now regulatory penalties suggest operational strain behind the growth story. The 2025 accounts? Filed on time last week.

Startup Daily
about 2 months ago
News

Fishburners enters administration, 400 startups face uncertain future

Fishburners Limited entered voluntary administration on Wednesday, appointing Phil Quinlan and Gayle Dickerson of KPMG to assess the business while pursuing "an accelerated sale and recapitalisation process." The collapse stems from unresolved rental debt at the government-backed Sydney Startup Hub, combined with subsequent operating losses. KPMG will continue trading while evaluating options. ## What This Means for Sales Fishburners currently houses over 400 startups across Sydney (64 York Street and 477 Pitt Street) and Brisbane. Its members have collectively raised over $2 billion since the organisation launched in 2011. Translation: a lot of early-stage companies just lost their operational base and community infrastructure. For sales professionals, this matters because Fishburners tenants are the startups most likely to be building their first sales teams. Seed and Series A companies hiring their first SDRs, first AEs, first sales managers. If those companies lose access to their co-working space, mentoring network, and event programming, expect hiring delays and budget scrutiny. ## The Numbers Fishburners supported 621 startups over the past five years and claims a network of 35,000 entrepreneurs. As a registered charity, it operates on community support and sponsorships rather than traditional revenue models. Current CEO Martin Karafilis and the board made the administration call after debt resolution efforts failed. No details yet on which creditors are owed what, or whether the Sydney Startup Hub lease will be renegotiated. KPMG is running a sale process, but the outcome timeline is unclear. ## Market Context This is the second major co-working operator to hit trouble in ANZ tech (WeWork's 2019 collapse being the first, though global). The Commons and other Sydney operators may absorb displaced startups, but Fishburners' non-profit model and community density made it unique. Hard to replicate. For now, 400 startups are watching administrators assess whether Fishburners survives, gets sold, or shuts down. That uncertainty does not help when you are trying to close a Series A or make your first sales hire.

SmartCompany
about 2 months ago
News

OpenAI launches self-serve ChatGPT Ads Manager with CPC bidding

OpenAI launched a self-serve Ads Manager for ChatGPT, complete with CPC bidding, conversion tracking, and measurement tools that look a lot like Google Ads infrastructure. The new platform lets advertisers register, upload creative, set budgets, manage campaigns, and track performance through a dedicated portal. OpenAI added pixel-based measurement and a Conversions API so teams can track purchases, sign-ups, and leads after users interact with ads. Previously, ChatGPT ads required a $50,000 minimum spend and agency partnerships with Dentsu, Omnicom, Publicis, and WPP. That barrier is gone. The self-serve model opens the platform to SMBs and performance teams running smaller tests. ## What this means for sales teams If you are running lead gen or prospecting campaigns, ChatGPT ads now compete directly with Google and LinkedIn for your budget. The conversational format could work for complex B2B offers where you need more context than a standard display ad provides. OpenAI says advertisers get aggregated performance insights without access to individual conversations. Worth noting: this is beta, US-only for now. No ANZ launch timeline, no pricing details beyond CPC and CPM options. The company has been building toward this since October 2024, adding shopping tools, product recommendations, and checkout integrations. Revenue hit $3.7 billion annualised in late 2024, driven by subscriptions and API usage. Ad revenue is still nascent, but OpenAI projects over $11 billion total revenue in 2025. ## The comp and hiring angle OpenAI scaled from under 400 employees in 2023 to around 3,500 in early 2026, with 200-300 in sales and marketing. Recent hires include enterprise AEs from Google and Salesforce to support B2B growth. No dedicated CRO is publicly listed, sales falls under COO Brad Lightcap. In ANZ, OpenAI has minimal direct presence, no disclosed offices or headcount. Regional traction comes through Microsoft Azure partnerships and API deals with companies like Canva and Atlassian. If ads expand beyond the US, expect ANZ hiring to follow. ## Bottom line ChatGPT is now an ad platform with self-serve tools and performance tracking. If you are testing new lead gen channels, this is worth watching. Just know the data is limited, the market is unproven, and your LinkedIn rep is probably already asking why you are diverting budget.

SmartCompany
about 2 months ago
News

Budget R&D boost targets big firms while startups push CGT relief

## Budget R&D Changes Miss Startup Reality Next week's federal budget will raise the R&D tax incentive cap from $150M to $250M-$300M, Treasurer Jim Chalmers confirmed. The increase falls short of the Denholm review's recommendation to remove the cap entirely. The problem: this helps large R&D-heavy firms, not the 9,000 startups claiming the current 43.5% refundable offset for companies under $20M turnover. Latest ATO data shows those startups claimed $3.4B in FY2024, the real engine of ANZ innovation. ## CGT Changes Create Uncertainty Startup advocates fear proposed CGT reforms will erode the 50% discount, undermining the R&D boost. No specifics released yet, but US research shows tax increases reduce startup patents by 5-10% through diminished VC activity. Meanwhile, US startups got immediate R&D expensing restored under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (July 2025), with retroactive relief for companies under $31M in average gross receipts. ANZ founders are watching competitors get liquidity while they wait for budget scraps. ## What This Means for Sales Teams If you are selling into ANZ startups, cash flow matters more than ever. The R&D cap lift does nothing for your Series A customers burning through runway. CGT uncertainty makes exits harder to price, which means longer sales cycles for anything tied to founder liquidity. For sales professionals at larger tech firms (Atlassian's 10,000 headcount, Canva's 3,000-plus team), the R&D boost could mean expanded engineering budgets and more tools procurement. But for the mid-market SaaS players competing with Xero ($1.5B revenue, 3,000 staff), this budget offers little relief. ANZ holds just 2% of global VC share ($5B in 2025). The US got retroactive tax breaks and expanded QSBS exclusions. We are getting a cap adjustment that helps companies already doing $150M+ in R&D spend. Budget drops next week. Expect startup groups to push hard on CGT relief and refundable offsets. Without it, the productivity agenda is just optics.

SmartCompany
about 2 months ago
News

SaaStr ran two AI VPs for $254 in March: what that means for sales orgs

## The numbers SaaStr founder Jason Lemkin posted his March 2026 Replit bill: $254.06 to run two AI agents that handle VP-level work. Qbee (AI VP Customer Success) cost $159.55. 10K (AI VP Marketing) cost $94.51. For context: those roles filled by humans at a Series C+ B2B company run $500k-$800k all-in annually. SaaStr is paying roughly $3,000 per year combined for both. The agents are not full VP replacements. They handle the operational layer: the 60-70% of a VP's week spent running the machine, not making strategic calls. ## What they actually do **Qbee** manages 100+ sponsors for SaaStr AI Annual 2026. Owns the sponsor portal, coordinates booth assignments, replies to sponsor questions in real time, flags issues before they blow up. Result: 70% reduction in human hours on sponsor ops. The remaining 30% stays human for pricing exceptions, escalations, relationship work. **10K** runs Monday marketing standup, pushes daily GTM updates, tracks campaign performance, drafts content briefs, monitors registration trends. She surfaces what is working and where to spend the next dollar. She does not replace strategic marketing leadership. She replaces the operational visibility layer that swallows most of a marketing leader's week. ## What this means for sales orgs Classic SaaS seats (Salesforce, Gong, Outreach) cost $100-$300 per user per month. Then you add $150k-$300k in fully loaded comp to get a human doing something useful with that seat. The seat is the cheap part. With agents, the agent IS the seat AND the human. The $95 per month is the whole cost stack. No $200k salary. No benefits. No recruiter fee. No PTO, severance, Slack license, laptop. It is $95. The agent works 24/7. Does not get sick. Does not miss Monday standup. Does not quit for a competitor. This does not replace every role. Strategy, judgment, relationships, novel problem-solving, leadership, taste, voice: humans still win by a mile. But the operational layer of mid-level and senior roles just got priced at roughly 1% of what it cost a year ago. ## The full stack SaaStr's total March Replit bill: $2,324.43 for 6 production agents, 14 published apps, 1.9M+ requests served. That is less than what most B2B companies spend on a single mid-tier SaaS tool. Lemkin notes third-party AI agents cost more but are still a great deal. His advice: buy, do not build, if you can. ## What to watch If the operational layer of VP-level work costs $3k per year instead of $500k, comp structures and org charts will shift fast. Not because AI replaces strategic leadership, but because the layer underneath it just became a rounding error. Worth noting: SaaStr operates media and events, not enterprise sales. The agents handle sponsor ops and marketing coordination, not quota-carrying roles. How this translates to SDR ops, pipeline management, or account planning remains to be tested at scale.

SaaStr
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